Joining the host of literary scholars who bring the spatial theories of Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau and Yi-fu Tuan to bear on the practices and documents they scrutinize, Janette Dillon justifies her concern with spatiality by pointing out that many documents of the early modern period evince ‘an intense concern with the precise way that movement takes place within the given space’, as well as a close attention to spatial design (p. 2); in other words, the interest in communicating through spatial means during this period necessitates our examination of these practices. Following up on Dillon's earlier book Theatre, Court, and City 1595–1610: Drama and Social Space in London (2000), this work offers a great deal of historical detail and some fine semiotic analysis of the use of space in the practices of the English court. This volume treats seven categories of court performance: royal entries and coronations, royal progresses, meetings with ambassadors, court revels, tournaments, trials and executions. Some chapters offer more description than analysis; others, the reverse. In her introduction, Dillon explains how literary scholars today understand space and place; she goes on to discuss performance and witnessing in the context of early modern court life, and she concludes by explaining that we can learn from the rituals of the court ‘how minute details of posture, gesture, movement and physical environment are the bearers of the larger social and political meanings’ (p. 17).

While the first chapter, dealing with royal entries and coronations, owes a great debt to the archival scholarship of David Bergeron and others, Dillon offers a fresh view of the pageantry in pointing out that these ceremonies must be examined both as static constructions and as performances in motion, for ‘the nature of the space changes as the nature of the moment does’ (p. 28). Similarly, while her detailed examination of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth, Robert Dudley's estate, covers some of the same material as Richard McCoy's The Rites of Knighthood (1989), Dillon considers more carefully the complex negotiations of gift exchange and the semiotics of garden design.

Dillon is at her best in reading the power relations inherent in the use of space at the English court during meetings with foreign ambassadors, and in her surprising consideration of the spectator's experience of court revels (in which the spectator is, willy-nilly, a participant). In addition, the chapter on trials stands out, as Dillon analyses the competition for representation in two heresy trials as well as the public hearing concerning the legitimacy of Henry VIII's marriage with Katharine of Aragon and the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots.

While this book offers no central argument, it provides a valuable new perspective on the ceremonies of early modern England and demonstrates what we can gain from expanding our definition of ‘performance’.